Human Nature and Ultimate Good

Essay Preview: Human Nature and Ultimate Good

There is the question on what is the ultimate good. The ultimate good is basically the core of human nature. The discovery of the ultimate good is not a process of defining what is good but rather rediscovering what is our original dispositionÐ'ÐŽXto do which is right. There is an emerging perspective in which judgment of what is good is submerged in the culture and historicity of the person. However there is a need to consider that the pursuit of good is universal. Regardless of culture, humans know that to kill is not good and to steal property is not good. The main point is that the pursuit of ultimate good is humanÐ'ÐŽÐ'¦s natural predisposition. It is innate in humans to be good. Unconsciously, we perform actions, which are in pursuit of this ultimate good because it in our nature.

However, historicity and our submersion into cultures create some barriers in our discovery of this ultimate good. There are lots of environmental influences and institutional forces that would hinder people from rediscovering our human nature. The paradigm of people or the way people look at the environment is molded inside the family, the school, and the society in general. This paradigm however is culture-specific. This however does not mean that humans are bound to act according to these paradigms.

The problems of the search for the ultimate good remained as an important dilemma in the society today. This could be seen in the way corporate ethics failure has become prevalent in the corporate world. One would see here a basic failure, which is the kind of good that people are searching. The failure of ethics in the corporate world is a result of people unable to see things through the lens of humansÐ'ÐŽÐ'¦ original beingness. This means that people in their busy lives have forgotten the meaning of being human. This is Ð'ÐŽÐ'Òbeing with others.Ð'ÐŽÐ'¦ In the process, there is the failure of achieving the ultimate good because humans have failed to discover, that which is good as Ð'ÐŽÐ'ÒbeingÐ'ÐŽÐ'¦ with Ð'ÐŽÐ'Òothers.Ð'ÐŽÐ'¦

An action is right then if this is in accordance with a corresponding moral virtue. This action then that the person does can only be called righteous if it is composed of full knowledge, freedom of choice, and a steadfast way of reacting to similar affections. This means that essentially to act ethically is a choosing to do what is right because it is the good in itself or the ultimate good and not because it will issue forth some further goods (Ð'ÐŽÐ'§AristotleÐ'ÐŽÐ'¦s Conception of the RightÐ'ÐŽÐ'Ð).

There are also other perspectives on what is ethical. For example, for some, moral action can be defined as doing what is optimizing to the good. This means that in choosing what is a moral action people would do what is morally right on the basis of what action would produce the greatest possible amount of good in the universe (Ð'ÐŽÐ'§Moralism in PanayotÐ'ÐŽKÐ'ÐŽÐ'Ð). This also incorporates the level of choice and freedom, it only diverts from the definition above as it actually proposes consequentialism or utilitarianism in the vector of morals. Thus an action is moral based on the resulting good that it would be able to produce.

Corporate Social Responsibility

Financial difficulties in an organization are certainties that are part of the dynamics in the corporate world. When an organization becomes quite focused on the bottom line of the business, there is a tendency for leaders to actually fail to acknowledge important values and ethics failure could eventually occur. Many business ethics researches have started to focus on the role of leaders in the failure of ethics in the business. Analysts believe that the failure of ethics in an organization emanates from the failure of the leaders to curtail unethical practice or worse, it is the leader who perpetuates the unethical behavior in the business. The culture of the organization and the leadership in the organization is a major factor on the creation of the dynamics on whether the organization will have an ethical environment or not.

One of the essential elements of corporate ethics failure today is intentionality. This is an act that is willfully done by the leader in order to impose deception in the company. Deception in the company is one of the common ethical failures in the business today. Leaders of organizations have continuously make bottom line appear to be achieved even when they were not. Deception comes at a cost. One of the major results of deception is of course loss of public trust. This is very important in ensuring that the members of the community support the organization. In cases where there is a loss of public trust, this would certainly affect the sales of the organization or the patronage of their clients. The behaviors of organizations have a large impact in the society (Bruhn 192). Many analysts believe that the prevalence of unethical businesses in the society has created a society with low trust and decline of the level of social capital.

Social capital is harder to acquire than human capital since the formation of this capital is highly dependent on the social ethics of an organization. The behavior of the firms could have some important impacts on the ethical habits of the society in general (Young 2). Since most people develop their affairs and transactional capacity through the workplace, unethical practices in the workplace would have an impact on the way members of the organization would deal with the community or social sphere other than the place of work.

Despite the presence of personal values, people are usually pressured in terms of the image that they emanate to other people. People always need approval from the people around